Conversation: Teaching teachers in a land of optimism - Frances O'Keeffe, teacher

By Marilyn Kerjean

New arrivals teacher Frances O’Keeffe (pictured) had been thinking about
making “some sort of a change” when she saw a flyer last year inviting
teachers to apply for a one term secondment to a teaching mission in East
Timor.

“It was one of those things where everything fell into place,” she says.

So the 56-year-old grandmother spent the first teaching term of this
year working in East Timor’s fledgling Catholic Teachers’ College.

Her contribution was part of the college’s English language program;
one of a series of ongoing courses it provides for local teachers.

Melbourne province Marist Brothers have been working in East Timor since
September 2000.

They are establishing the college at Baucau, a major town on the northern
coast of East Timor.

Its English program helps primary and high school teachers develop their
English language skills in the hope of improving their ability to access
further study in education, either at university in Dili or through the
teachers’ college.

Most teachers in East Timor have had some training before. Some have
worked for many years in schools with hardly any training at all.

But they have plenty of enthusiasm for learning and improving the quality
of education in their newly-restored country.

Frances says East Timor has a 49 per cent illiteracy rate; schools are
being slowly rebuilt, but there is a paucity of materials for the task.

Students are accustomed to having no more than a blackboard, chalk and
tables and chairs (often donated) in their classrooms.

“The teachers are just wanting and absorbing so much,” Frances says.

“They are so dedicated.”

One example of this dedication is the effort many local teachers made
to attend a conference held by the college.

“They came from everywhere,” Frances says.

“For teachers to get there, it’s not like they could jump in a car; so
many of them would have walked for a couple of hours.”

The college in Baucau is also an outreach.

Some of its teachers travel along the coast to Laga twice a week and
others stay overnight in the mountain town of Venilale to teach classes
there each Thursday and Friday.

Frances’s students would work in the morning and attend their English
classes in the afternoon.

Other subjects being introduced by the college included curriculum development,
methodology and religious curriculum.

Frances was seconded by the Catholic Education Office, Sydney.

The Independent Education Union paid for her airfare and accommodation.

She is the first teacher from the Sydney archdiocese’s Catholic Education
Office to work at the teachers’ college.

“I want to go back,” she says. “Three months was too short a time.

“Anybody who had been there for a longer period, say 12 months or two
years, looked at me as though I was mad.”

Frances had never lived in a developing country before this year.

In Baucau she shared a simple house, large by East Timor standards, with
three other teachers.

Electricity was available – on alternate nights – and there was plenty
of cold water, thanks to the luxury of a water tank outside.

“The electricity went on and off and in the end it just petered out altogether
and those kind of experiences just expanded my whole life,” says Frances.

“One night when the electricity was off we turned our torches off and
spent the night talking and watching fireflies.

“The stars, because there was no electricity, were just magnificent.

“Just basic things like that gave us so much pleasure. Things like watching
the geckos catch their dinner sound so mundane, but just to sit and to
be was something wonderful.”

Frances was struck by the hospitality of the East Timorese and their
strong Catholic faith, as well as the lack of self-pity she saw in people
who had suffered in the struggle for independence.

Frances briefly met a young man named Manakus who helped with the running
of the teachers’ college and who acted as a tour guide to the terror of
the East Timorese in 1999 and the years preceding.

“He was just telling me very matter of factly, this happened there and
that was just razed,” says Frances.

“There are people there dealing with having been traumatised.

“When I asked him what his feelings were he said, yes he was angry, but
he’s got to get on with his life.

“And that is what everyone is doing.”

Frances felt the spirit of excitement and optimism buzzing throughout
East Timor while she was there in the lead-up to the official independence
day in May – the occasion when the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, formally
handed over the authority of East Timor’s government.

Frances has been a new arrivals teacher for the Sydney archdiocese since
1988.

She goes into Catholic schools twice a week during school hours to support
children with their English and to help them settle them into the Australian
culture.

Before that she taught English as a Second Language in schools.

She sums up her brief missionary experience thus: “While I was in East
Timor a friend emailed me (Frances took her laptop and a battery with
her) and asked me: ‘What is your joy?’

“As soon as I saw that I knew that my joy was being there and I cannot
describe the sense that I had any better than that.”